Mt. Rainier Tried to Break Me

Mount Rainier was tough. I mean, of course it was. It's Mount freaking Rainier, the most prominent mountain in the contiguous United States where even the easiest route up requires 9,000 feet of elevation gain. On a bluebird day in July, me and two fellow climbers tackled it. This is our experience. That was some good audio to complement this video. On the way to Mount Rainier. At the very end of July 2024, almost as late into the season as you can safely go, my buddy Alex, who I summited Denali with the year prior, hit me up to join him on one of the premier mountains in the continental U.S. One that I had tried before but got weathered out. The Great Mount Rainier. In May of 2022, I attempted the mountain for the first time as a part of a skill seminar. Basically a training week which would culminate in the summit bid. But sadly, our summit bid was foiled by snow accumulation and avalanche conditions after a couple days of this. This go-around, we would be taking the standard route up the Disappointment Cleaver and we're shooting to make the summit and back down in under 24 hours. Fresh off our ascent up Mount Hood together, my buddy Ian also joined us. The plan was to cruise on up the Muir Snowfield to Camp Muir in the afternoon, get a quick mountain house dinner and sleep for a couple hours or so. We would then wake up between 10 and 11 p.m to begin the ascent. We didn't pack sleeping bags as we instead opted to sleep in nothing but our pads and layers. Cowboy camping at its finest. That wasn't me, that was already there. That was whoever was there before us but I'll take the credit. Just arrived here at Camp Muir, just over 10k. Gonna cowboy camp here for a couple hours and wake up and go for the thing. I've woken up early for plenty of mountains but we woke up at 11 p.m for this one to get a good start at midnight. We did the entire route up to the top of the Disappointment Cleaver in the dark. In my opinion it's the most annoying part of the climb with loose sometimes steep rock and it feels like it goes on forever but once the top is reached it is anything but disappointing. The rays of light peeked out from the sky and we were looking down on Little Tahoma, a sub-peak that's as high as Mount Hood, Oregon's highest mountain. What was disappointing was me throwing up from a combination of exertion and taking a bite out of my friend's sandwich that I apparently wasn't a fan of. Luckily I recovered and we trekked on up the upper Emmons Glacier. By this point the sun was out and we could see all of Washington state beyond the highly glaciated terrain and a blanket of clouds well below us. The original route that we had planned on climbing had collapsed the day before and so some of the guides from RMI Expeditions zoomed up there to locate a new route slightly to the right of it and secure some ladders. This section of the climb is heavily crevassed making it potentially one of the most dangerous areas you'll encounter. For this gap the RMI crew strapped together two ladders and anchored those to the top. Going up was a bit wobbly for sure and looking down at the vast opening in the earth below was but also steep and tiring especially with the depleting oxygen and our lack of sleep combined with that started to take its toll. After a valiant attempt Ian wisely chose to listen to his body and stop less than a thousand feet from the crater. I want to emphasize that Rainier is a very challenging mountain and so anyone making it up this high is a feat in itself. Alex and I persisted on up and about every 50 feet or so I had to stop and catch my breath for about 30 seconds. Finally at almost precisely 8 a.m we reached the summit crater rim and I took a nap. The true summit the Columbia Crest lies across the snowfield and Alex went and tagged it but I felt so sleep deprived that I decided to put that biological need first. By most accounts I've heard the crater rim counts as summiting and so will I but I'm also slightly bothered to this day about not tagging the true tippity top of the mountain. I guess I'll just have to do it again. The way down was almost as tiring as the way up as I sunk into every single step with exhaustion but we scooped Ian up roped him back in and made our way back towards civilization appreciating in full daylight the glaciers and crevasses that we could only see with headlamps on the ascent. Rainier was not an easy summit its variety of treacherous terrain steepness altitude and distance covered makes it one of the most challenging in the U.S. People do get injured and even occasionally die out here. So it should be treated with respect. Overall with Denali being my hardest climb out of 10 I give Mount Rainier an 8.5. Beautiful, alluring, and tough.